LIVE: MOLD / SWEATY PALMS / EMOTIONAL OLYMPICS – 14/02/2019

-SOUP KITCHEN, MANCHESTER- Emotional Olympics Curiously we start with a one-man-guitar show; the other Olympians were sadly trapped in the confines of the capital. He somehow manages to turn the dismembering sensation of lacking a full band into a melancholic exhibition that displayed some capable vocal abilities, featuring a bright falsetto, humming in the low […]
-ALBERT HALL, MANCHESTER- Neneh Cherry is the absolute boss. Here she is on stage at the Albert Hall, absolutely killing it in support of her recent Four Tet and 3D (of Massive Attack fame) produced album Broken Politics, an album that has rocketed her to the kind of critical acclaim that came with her seminal […]

LIVE: NENEH CHERRY – 13/02/2019

LIVE: FUR / HONEY MOON – 12/02/2019

-THE CASTLE HOTEL, MANCHESTER- A glimpse of summer is brought to us during this harsh winter with edgy-on-the-outside/soft-on-the-inside aesthetic from supporting band Honey Moon; familiar to that sensation you get from a lemon soother, settling your cold down, even if it’s just for a little bit. When I first saw the name of the support, […]
-YES, MANCHESTER- Wild Nothing are a group hellbent on melting my insides via extreme doses of summertime nostalgia and as they step onto the stage, I anticipate an epic singalong where only I will be vocal. That’s right, the dickhead in the Carhartt with his arms in the air all night is me, what you […]

LIVE: WILD NOTHING / J FERNANDEZ – 11/02/2019

ALBUM: METHYL ETHEL – TRIAGE

2019 could not be off to a better start than with the release of one the most anticipated Australian albums of the year, Methyl Ethel’s ‘Triage’. Fresh off the success of 2017’s ‘Everything is Forgotten’ which reached #16 on the Australian charts and #28 on NME’s Albums of the Year awards, big things are expected […]
-SOUP KITCHEN, MANCHESTER- Bleach Boy We start the evening with what I assume is a Seattleite-redux; the guitars and drums shine the brightest (I suppose being the loudest helps), all the while their brand of militant distortion devolving into a kind of sonic mush, whereby the vocals and bass suffer in the sense that… you […]

LIVE: SURFBORT / BLEACH BOY – 13/02/2019

LIVE: JIMOTHY – 10/02/2019

-GORILLA, MANCHESTER- Inadvertently on a mission to prove you don’t have to be a lyrical miracle to be a rap god, London’s number one alternative son Jimothy is setting the scene alight. Recently announcing on the Romesh Ranganathan podcast ‘Hip Hop Saved My Life’ that he was ditching the Lacoste section of his quirky pseudonym, […]
The Lake District has inspired many artists over the years, the most surprising recent convert being Californian garage rocker Tim Presley. After relocating from LA to San Francisco, he then upped sticks again and ended up in Stavelely, in the Lakes, in the depths of winter, with fellow songwriter Cate Le Bon. While she was […]

ALBUM: WHITE FENCE – I HAVE TO FEED LARRY’S HAWK

LIVE: DAMMIT I’M MAD – 06/02/2019

-THE PEER HAT, MANCHESTER- We have a wealth of support acts in store at the Peer Hat tonight, and some excellent craft beers to accompany us. It’s a nice place for a drink as well as a gig. Chaos LOL gets his five-minute warning and hastily drops some super-heavy gabba before throwing down some polyrhythmic […]
-GORILLA, MANCHESTER- I came here to review a critically-acclaimed US group who rose to fame in the 1970’s, who appeared in heavy rotation in the early days of MTV, who released over forty albums, nearly as many compilations and created dozens of multimedia projects. What I am seeing, at a packed, sold out Gorilla, is […]

LIVE: THE RESIDENTS – 05/02/2019